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Hood vent installation and CF hood painting

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snowborder714

Moderator
16,179
379
Oct 15, 2006
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
I picked up a carbon fiber hood from a friend. He was getting rid of it because it had some really bad peeling and would've required a lot of work/money to get it looking nice. At the time, I didn't even know what to use it for, but figured for the price it couldn't hurt to have it.

Here's what it looked like when I picked it up.

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I then picked up a new 18x10 Carbontrix carbon fiber hood vent that someone else was selling at a good price. Again, had no real plans for it, but why not? Then I picked up another hood vent from RRE (same thing, only fiberglass). This way, I had the pick of which one I wanted to use depending on what I did with the hood.

After thinking it, I decided I was going to paint the hood to match my car. I did not want to spend the money on having it re-gelled and risk having it yellow. Plus, my brother was going to paint his engine bay, so he wanted the practice. This helped make my decision to use the fiberglass hood vent and not paint over the nice carbon fiber. I could deal with the extra 3 oz. of weight of the fiberglass vent (10.4 oz. vs 7 oz. according to Mike at RRE).

My brother started by chipping off the clear coat that he could. Not all would come off that way so he then sanded down the hood to remove the rest of the clear. He used a random orbit palm sander with some pretty rough sand paper because the clear was being stubborn. I forget the exact grits, but somewhere between 80 and 300 I believe. In the end, some of the sand paper was too rough as you can see some of the marks.

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The next step was to locate the holes to drill in the vent. I used hole punch reinforcements to mark them and then drilled in the middle of them using a 1/8" drill bit (size of rivets I used).

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We then created a template to surround and hold the hood vent. This was used to determine the size of the vent hole, help position the vent, and keep it in place so we could make the hole marks (rivet holes and vent hole). We also used some string to help see where the front of the vent would be by not closing the hood the whole way and looking in the gap on the side.

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The next step was to cut out the large vent hole. This was done using a dremel with reinforced cutoff wheel and a sawzall and cleaned up with a file. Then the rivet holes were drilled. I took depth measurements of the vent and hood to see how long the rivets needed to be. I ended up ordering 3 different lengths of stainless steel rivets from McMaster-Carr which covered all the holes I needed. We positioned the front edge just behind the radiator hoping that once air flows through it it will just rise out of the engine bay. It's also as far towards the drivers side as possible while still being on a flat part of the hood.

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Then it was on to painting. The hood was prepped and sprayed with paint-matched paint (3 coats I believe) and then a clear (2 coats I believe). I spoke with a few shops/stores on how to properly paint carbon fiber, but could not get a straight answer, let alone the same answer from any two places. The best answer I think I got was I needed to use a reface before painting. The reface would give the paint a solid layer to lay on, making it nice and smooth. However, this reface needed a gun with a 3.0-4.0 size tip! The gun we have only accepts tips up to 1.8, so I wasn't going to buy another gun just for that one use. So we decided just to spray it and see what happens.

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Finally, I picked up a new set of Sparco hood pins from eBay to replace the rusted set that came with the hood.

In the end, I'm pretty pleased with it. It was the first time painting something with an actual gun and I think it came out decent. Yes, there are some flaws in the hood, but I expected that. It was in pretty rough shape when I got it, so I figured it could only get better. It's going to be my track hood, so another reason not to be too concerned about looks. It's definitely got function - less weight and a big hood vent.

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I love the RRE vent, but I hate how it has to be off-centered.

But I'm still considering it as an option in the future.
 
It looks great, I agree it does kind of suck it can't be semetrical, but for venting options at the track I do agree it is one of the better choices.

That is until Vader 1 is made again right? :)
 
So what's the verdict performance-wise? I see you're running SD so hopefully you can give us some before/after results.

Also there's a local guy who just cut a hole in his hood above his tubular manifold, looks good actually, no vent or anthing, just a rectangular hole LOL.
 
Thanks for all the compliments guys!


That is until Vader 1 is made again right? :)

I'm not the biggest fan of that hood and I don't think the built-in vent would let enough air out.

So what's the verdict performance-wise? I see you're running SD so hopefully you can give us some before/after results.

Also there's a local guy who just cut a hole in his hood above his tubular manifold, looks good actually, no vent or anthing, just a rectangular hole LOL.

I haven't actually driven the car with the hood on yet. I just got the pins installed this weekend and was having issues with a hose blowing off the thermostat housing, so the car's currently sitting with hardly any coolant in it.

Any specific data you're looking for? I could get some 3rd gear pulls from 2k to redline with the hood on at some point and post them up along with some pulls from this past weekend. I have also considered using both hoods (stock vs. vented carbon fiber) at a track event next season to see what kind of differences it makes, but you have a while until that can happen.
 
ahhh the perfectionist inside of me is going crazy, i hate how it has to be off center! im gonna go take a bunch of deep breaths now. Oh and nice hood it will be perfect for track day uses.
 
Hmm, that's surprising how many people are bothered by the vent placement. I've always seen this vent placed in the same position (since it has to be), so I guess I got used to it. Plus, I'd put it wherever and however, as long as it's functioning optimally.

Too bad it takes a lot of money to get form and function all in the same package.
 
you put the vent right above the hottest part of the engine bay. so its possible you could go for a cruise. haha.
 
Can I ask where you bought the vent from? I used to have the same vent on my old cf hood but got it from a place in Cali that is no longer in business. And for the record I had mine in the same location.
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I bought mine from Mike at RRE. They own (or something like that) Carbontrix and make both CF and fiberglass models. They don't have the fiberglass ones listed anywhere and only make them every so often I believe. I sent him an e-mail on pricing and then a little while later he got 2 in and asked if I was still interested in one, since the other was spoken for.
 
What does the paint look like on the hood?

I thank you for putting up this thread, because my CF hood is getting trashed and I wanted to get it painted but was unsure how the paint would look on top of the CF.
 
Nice job man.I noticed that nobody asked how would you keep the rain out?:confused: Im thinking about doing a custom hood vent on my 1g but things like rain and stuff keep dawning on me....
 
Brian only uses that hood while racing, not every day. And thanks for bumping this, quite the blast from the past! :)
 
That is exactly what I would like to know being I purchased the same scoop and did not install it yet
well seeing its location its going down by the rad hose so any rain goes down there will just drip down as no major sensor connectors are around there, the only thing it will do it make your exhaust crackle if it gets on the hot covers, thats about it, the only other senor in that place is for the rad fan and its still quite far away from this opening. this is the same vent im going to be running aswell as i cannot find anything better to use that looks good, ( wanted to mimic AMB hood ) nothing out there like it
 
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